Month: April 2011

Emailing clients is a great way to keep in touch, alert them of upcoming sales or drive in new consignments. Even if your consignment software supports sending emails directly from within itself, once you try to send multiple, identical or similar emails, you’re at risk of being blocked as SPAM.

A client recently inquired as to how to send emails to clients in her Consignment Success database. If you’re sending more than 100 emails, The Computer Peeps recommend a bulk email service such as Constant Contact or MailChimp.

Starting at the Consignor list, you have a list of all of your consignor accounts…

Consignment Success – Consignors (Click to Enlarge)

If we click the Consignor Reports button, we’re presented with a way to select all or specific accounts, as well as a way to export to a format acceptable for Constant Contact…

Consignment Success – Consignor Reports (Click to Enlarge)

We’re then given a file that contains the accounts we’ve exported…

Export DialogConsignment Success – .CSV Export (Click to Enlarge)

This file can be utilized with email services such as Constant Contact and MailChimp. In our example above, we exported a file of all accounts. Emailing ‘all’ accounts might be good in the event of a big sale or event. You could export just consignors that haven’t consigned since last year (encouraging them to bring in new items).

From time to time, you might need to discount an item – e.g. a friend that helped you out with your new store opening – but you don’t want the discount to impact the consignor. This isn’t a general sale or something that’s part of your consignor agreement. It’s a friendly discount, so you want the store to eat the loss, so to speak.

First, here’s the quick version:

Click Sale (F4)

Enter the discount percent – e.g. 50%

Check the box next to Calculate Net on Original Price

Click OK

Ring up your items as usual

The result is, no matter what you discount the price by, the consignor’s net will be based on the original price.

Here’s a more detailed walk-through with screen shots…

In Point of Sale, click the Sale (F4) button…
Liberty Sale Post

You will be prompted to enter a Discount Percent. This is where you need to selectCalculate Net on Original Price…

Posting Options

Once you click OK, it will put POS into the Sale Posting Mode (at the defined Discount Percent)…

Our consignment split was 50/50, so in this example, the store ate the entire thing. Our consignor is still owed their $25 for each item…

Price Sold vs. Cons. Net

Use the Calculate Net on Original Price option carefully. The majority of the time, you do not want to do this. Normal sales are typically part of the consignor agreement, so as the item’s price is discounted, the consignor’s net due is as well.

Here’s another one. Another bogus link that entices people to click it. I mean, that is a really cute puppy! Facebook is a great resource for businesses. That being said, it can be a breeding ground for viruses.

Facebook is social by its very nature. Information is shared quickly, which is good and bad. In this case, one <click> leads to a virus post sitting out there in a feed. Then someone else sees it and goes, “Oh, well if Bill liked it, it MUST be good! <click>”

Wham, that’s when you get hit with a virus or Trojan. Most people aren’t running ESET NOD32 though. With ESET, it’s at least going to catch the Trojan that was downloaded to your hard drive. It’s better just to not click links like that to begin with. Why tempt fate?

A virus can bring down your entire business in a matter of seconds. Once a virus (or in this case, a Trojan Downloader) is installed, your system is no longer in your control. Networking can be rendered useless, preventing your computers from talking to one another. Software won’t run, meaning your consignment software is dead in the water.

The extent of damage a virus can do is vast. The damage can be so bad that at the end of the day, it’s simply not worth it to try and fix up the rest of the damage. It ends up being quicker and more cost-effective to backup your data, erase the hard drive and reinstall Windows. That’s not exactly fun either, so while it’s possible to recover, it comes at a cost.

Talk to your employees and co-workers about these silly, fake scams that float through Facebook – awareness is everything!

If you clicked on the puppy and didn’t get a prompt from your antivirus software that the threat was blocked, chances are you are infected. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Facebook – no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am trying to encourage and spread awareness. We use awareness in our everyday lives to avoid pyramid schemes and sales tactics. Let’s bring that same power to the virtual world.

Sure it’s just 0s and 1s, but this virtual stuff can end up costing you real money.